Top News for February 4, 2014

Satya Nadella is Microsoft’s new CEO. Nadella has been with Microsoft for 22 years. Founder and former CEO Bill Gates will step down as chairman, and take an advisory role to Nadella. Board member John Tompson, the lead independent director, will become chairman. Current CEO Steve Ballmer, who may soon be the company’s largest shareholder, will remain on the board. Nadella starts work as CEO today. Read more at npr.org.

Bill Gates is giving up a seat, but also taking on a bigger role at Microsoft. He's stepping down from his position as chairman today and will take up the role of technology advisor to new CEO, Satya Nadella. Though Gates has said multiple times he'd rather work on philanthropic projects than Microsoft, Nadella apparently requested Gates' assistance specifically, and Gates explained a little more in a somewhat awkward video uploaded to Microsoft's YouTube channel. [[ROLL SOT]] Read more at theverge.com.

John Thompson will replace Bill Gates as Chairman, though Gates will remain on the board. Thompson has been on the board for two years, and he was in charge of the effort to find a new CEO. Thompson is the CEO of Virtual Instruments, a cloud company. He’s also an investor. He may be best known as the former CEO of Symantec, a position he held for ten years. Before that he worked at IBM. Read more at zdnet.com.

Steve Ballmer steps down today after running the company for 14 years. When Ballmer took over from Bill Gates in early 2000, the company was flying high, with a record-breaking market capitalization. Today, Microsoft’s market cap is a fraction of that. Ballmer will remain on the board. And he’s expected to surpass Bill Gates some time this year and become the company’s largest shareholder. Read more at windowsitpro.com.